


TBBT One-shots

by falsteloj



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Misunderstandings, One Shot Collection, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:46:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsteloj/pseuds/falsteloj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few Raj/Stuart oneshots:</p><p>1. The first clue Raj gets that his relationship with Stuart might not be as straightforward as he assumes is Stuart's sister turning up on his doorstep. (T) [<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1084992/chapters/2181949">LINK</a>]</p><p>2. First Times. (M) [<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1084992/chapters/2191728">LINK</a>]</p><p>3. Based on a prompt from last year's Queerfest: Raj Koothrappali, He thought the US was the land of liberty, sexuality-wise. (T) [<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1084992/chapters/2197147">LINK</a>]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set about two years in the future, give or take...

The first clue Raj had that his relationship with Stuart might not be as straightforward as he had assumed was Stuart's sister turning up on his doorstep. Not that he knew she was Stuart's sister, because he had long resigned himself to the fact that whatever it was he had done in a past life, it must have been on the higher end of the spectrum of unspeakable evil.

"Is Stuart here?" she asked, with a quirk of a smile which was frustratingly familiar, though he was almost certain he had never seen her before. He wanted to ask questions, or even to lean against the door jamb with affected casualness and woo the woman before him with all the charm the Earth's female population had assured him he did not possess. But he remembered too well the time he and Howard had pledged to fight to the death over a girl, and though Stuart was whippet thin, so was Howard, and that hadn't made the pain he was capable of inflicting any less debilitating.

So he invited her in to wait for Stuart to get back from the comic store, and after the introductions offered her coffee, and then tea, and all the other beverages he had in the kitchen cupboards before finally giving up and sitting gingerly on the opposite end of the sofa.

"Stephanie's a nice name," he said slowly, stupidly, and his heart raced even as he swiped his palms against the fabric of his cargo pants. He could talk to women now, after Lucy had dumped him like so many barrels of unregistered toxic waste, but the anxious rush in their presence remained. If the cupboard had held any alcohol, he would have been drinking it.

"Yeah, Mom was really into the whole 'st' sound," Stephanie said with another of those quirky smiles, and Raj laughed, awkward and nervous, though if it was meant to be a joke he hadn't really understood it.

He was just slow on the uptake in general he was forced to explain afterwards, because when Stephanie started talking about how rarely she made it to Pasadena, and how her Mom was always wanting to know how Stuart was, all he could think was how lucky Stuart was to have pulled a girl who smelled so nice.

When the conversation stalled he searched frantically for something to say, settling at the last minute on "Stuart will be here soon" instead of "You and Stuart look really similar." It seemed safer; Americans tended not to react well to accusations of incest. He had learned that lesson the hard way.

Stephanie just nodded, a slightly awkward movement Raj recognized from both stints of having Stuart share an apartment with him. It was about then the reality of the situation dawned on him. Unfortunately, Stephanie seemed to have her heart set on leading him to another, still more humiliating, epiphany regarding her reason for visiting.

"Stuart talks about you all the time," she said, with none of the weird undertone women usually used when voicing such a statement, "but I'm so glad to finally meet you. I just worry about him, you know? We all do. He deserves to be with someone who really cares about him."

Heat flooded his cheeks, and it was being sat with Howard and Leonard's mother in the cafeteria all over again, because he couldn't get his words out, and Stephanie had entirely misread the situation.

He was going to say that, to explain it, but Stuart chose that moment to arrive back from Pasadena's foremost - in fact, only - center for comics and collectibles.

"I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow," Stuart said, though he didn't sound angry about it, just as Stephanie beamed and said,

"I was just telling Raj how lucky he is to have captured the heart of my favourite brother."

Raj tried to interject there, because his friends' usual reaction to his failure to correct someone as to the true nature of their relationship was to give him a Chinese burn which stung for days. But his objection sounded more like trapped wind, and Stuart wasn't making eye contact with him anyway.

"There isn't a day goes by he doesn't offer his thanks to Kama," was Stuart's deadpan response, though the pale skin of his face was flushed with color. It was sarcasm, Raj thought. It had to be. Except then Stuart smiled at him, almost shy, and moved to sit beside him as he said, "She says that, but I'm actually her only brother."

"You two are so cute together!" Stephanie said, with the kind of squeal Raj had found women _often_ used when making such a statement. "Mom says this year she is going to drive to Pasadena herself if you don't bring your boyfriend home for Thanksgiving."

And that was the moment Raj finally worked up the courage to do the right thing.

He bailed.

* * *

"I say again," Howard said, with a longing glance at the Xbox controller on the coffee table, "where's the problem?"

"Dude!" Raj exclaimed, and flung his arms around for extra emphasis. "Have you been listening to me? Stuart's family thinks Stuart and I are an item, and they want me to stay for the Thanksgiving as Stuart's boyfriend!"

Sheldon sniffed, watching his gesticulation in distaste. "While I will miss your traditional Thanksgiving gift - and please note the lack of determiner before Thanksgiving - it _is_ the accepted social custom in these circumstances." When Raj only stared at him, bewildered, Sheldon went on, "I believe the usual advice offered in such a situation is 'man up'."

Penny just shrugged and gestured the hand holding her fork in Sheldon's general direction. "What he said."

That left Leonard, and Raj looked at him beseechingly. Surely Leonard would understand how disturbing this latest turn of events was?

Leonard pushed his glasses up his nose, and Raj leaned so far out of his seat in anticipation he was on the verge of falling. He did fall, flailing hopelessly as he clambered back onto the chair, because Leonard's opening line was,

"I know it's kind of scary when things start getting serious, but meeting someone's mother doesn't have to be that big a deal. Penny help me out here."

Penny put her hands out in front of her, as though warding off the question. "Your mother is not a good case in point."

"Try meeting my mother," Howard muttered, bitter, and Raj interrupted the lot of them, panic rising because if this was some sort of weird prank, he was already sick of it,

"Things are not getting serious, because there are no things! There is nothing. Nada. Shunya. Stuart is not my boyfriend!"

That caught their attention.

"Aw, sweetie, did you and Stuart break up again?"

Raj gaped at Penny, wondering if Sheldon's alternate universe theory was correct, and he had been accidentally transported into the realm of another Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali. One who noticed things like how nice Stuart smelled, and the way he was cutting and sharp to everyone and about everything but smiled at Raj all shy and secretive, like he was the only one whose opinion actually mattered.

"Again?" He asked, because it seemed the more important thing to focus on. Stuart's eyes were just eyes, it wasn't weird that he was realising he had always thought them pretty. "We never broke up one time, because we were never together. I'm not gay!"

He probably should have started with the last one, he thought with the gift of hindsight.

"Wait," Howard said, and this time Raj knew he had his friend's full attention. He could almost hear the cogs whirring. "But you _live_ together."

"Sheldon and Leonard live together," Raj countered, and it hurt, just a little, that Howard couldn't just accept his word for it.

"He does have a point," Sheldon noted.

"Yeah, but you two don't sleep in the same bed," Howard pointed out, and though Raj opened his mouth to protest, he was forced to close it, no obvious argument forming.

"That is usually a pre-requisite for regular coitus."

"Shut up, Sheldon," Raj snapped. "We don't have coitus. We're just two dudes who share a bed." His apartment was small, and his couch was uncomfortable. And it wasn't as if Stuart squirmed about or snored. Not loudly, at any rate. "That's all there is to it."

"Okay," Howard said, in the way that meant it wasn't okay at all.

"You're Facebook married," Penny said, her food forgotten. "You bought him a bunch of roses for Valentine's Day. I was there." She gave Leonard a look which suggested a visit to the comic store was not the kind of romantic gesture she appreciated.

"Yeah," Raj conceded, "but it wasn't a love thing. We're just two dudes who share a bed and buy each other flowers occasionally. There is nothing homosexual about it."

"Can you even hear yourself?" Howard asked, but refrained from making a more detailed attempt at ripping Raj's arguments to pieces. That was the kind of sacrifice you made for a best friend.

"This is fascinating," Sheldon said, untouched by social niceties. "Tell me, would you be willing to have electrodes attached to your brain?"

"Sheldon," Penny said, warningly, and Sheldon pouted like a child and said defiantly,

"I was only thinking of a potential research angle for Amy. That is why we make such a good partnership, _we_ understand each other."

"No, I'm not even going there," Penny said, more to herself than to the room at large, then turned to Raj. She even took his hand. Raj swallowed thickly. "Raj, sweetie, you don't think you and Stuart are in a relationship, I get it."

Howard muttered something at that. Raj chose to be the bigger man and ignored him.

"But," Penny continued, and her tone changed, like she was trying to sugarcoat something he really wasn't going to want to hear, "are you sure that Stuart doesn't? Because, from where I'm sitting, it doesn't sound like Stuart had any objections to taking you home and introducing you to his Mom as his boyfriend."

It was a ridiculous idea. But... Stuart hadn't looked uncomfortable at his sister's comments, he hadn't even looked all that embarrassed - and it was a very rare occasion that Stuart didn't look embarrassed - and the week before, when Sheldon had made him stay late at the office, Stuart made him dinner and kissed his cheek like they were living in a 1950s sitcom. Stuart was kind of sweet like that, leaving him little notes, and fixing him packed lunches, and never saying anything on the mornings when they woke up in a tangle of limbs, Stuart's fingers soothing through the tangles in his hair...

"Oh God," Raj groaned and buried his face in his hands. "My parents are going to kill me."

* * *

He drove aimlessly for well over an hour after leaving the others. Because how could he have been the last to know about his own relationship?

And he was, that fact was made abundantly clear. Wil Wheaton answered his questioning text with a threat to prove just how much of a crusher he could be, because Stuart had been pretty cut up the last time he had decided to ditch him for someone else. On Valentine's Day. It hadn't been like that at all, of course, but Lonely Larry agreed too readily with Wil's interpretation of events, and Captain Sweatpants advised him to buy a box of soft centers, because that always helped him patch up disputes with his own wife.

Raj didn't know what was more disturbing, the idea that all the comic store regulars thought he had dumped Stuart in favor of Lucy, or the idea that Captain Sweatpants was actually married. To a real live woman with an actual physical presence.

Stuart was just crazy, he told himself. He hadn't done anything to suggest they were an item, not really, and all of Stuart's friends were just fellow passengers on the train for crazy people. Nobody else would have jumped to the same mistaken conclusion, surely.

His family wouldn't have, he hoped, and he had to pull over because suddenly his limbs were shaking and he felt nauseous. He had spoken to his parents only days before, he reassured himself. They hadn't made any mention of disowning him.

In the end he rang Priya, because she had the best shot of understanding, and because he was too much of a coward to risk giving his older brothers yet another reason to make his life a misery. Priya didn't understand the question the first three times, and Raj didn't realize he was on the verge of tears until they were sliding down his face, and Priya was offering awkward platitudes through the handset. That was the kind of person she was.

"I don't want Mummy to be ashamed of me," he eventually managed to get out around the sobbing, and he prayed to the whole pantheon that nobody else ever found out about this conversation.

"Oh, Rajesh," Priya said, and those two words were more heartfelt than anything else she had ever said to him. "They were upset at first, of course, but they came round. I think Mummy had resigned herself to you being alone for always, and at least this way you might adopt some grandchildren."

He said his goodbyes then, strangely drained, and sobbed into his arms for a good ten minutes before he was able to get a grip on himself, and attempt to work out what the hell he was going to do about the mess he had found himself in.

* * *

It was late, really late, when he made it back to his apartment block. He looked an absolute state too, he knew. The cashier at the gas station had kept her finger above the alarm the whole time she was serving him.

Still he hesitated outside his door, no closer to figuring out what he should say to Stuart. He might not have to say anything, he thought, and the idea wasn't comforting. Stuart might have upped and left. Raj didn't want to spend the night in an empty apartment. Finally he shifted one times too many and he could hear the sound of claws skittering against the hardwood floor, and then against the wood of the door, Cinnamon yapping in excitement.

At least someone was still going to love him.

He fumbled with his keys, long enough for him to be convinced that Stuart wasn't there. He was wrong. Stuart was sat on the couch, in the same spot Raj had last seen him in, though his knees were tucked up. It made him look younger somehow.

The tension was thick, suffocating, and even Cinnamon seemed to think better of being a part of it, retreating to her basket after the bare minimum of petting.

"I bought chocolates," Raj said finally, at a loss, and it had seemed like a much better idea when Captain Sweatpants had suggested it. He dropped the box to the coffee table and sat beside Stuart on the couch, trying not to be unnerved by Stuart's lack of response. "I'm sorry. I'm an idiot."

"I'm sorry," Stuart countered, and up close Raj could see that the strain in his voice matched the blotchiness of his face. He wasn't the only one who had spent the evening crying. "It was too much, I know. I should just go. I would have already, but I didn't want to leave Cinnamon on her own and -"

Stuart was rambling now, and Raj was beginning to doubt their ability to get through this ordeal without one of them hyperventilating. He touched his hand to Stuart's arm, just to calm him, and it didn't feel strange to be so close. It was familiar, comfortable. It was no different to what they did everyday.

He really was an idiot.

"Wil Wheaten says you were upset when I dumped you for Lucy, but we weren't going out then. Were we?"

There was no better place to start than at the beginning, he decided. Lacking any real sense of a beginning, he opted for the earliest chronological point in the train wreck he had managed to make of what was meant to be a platonic living arrangement.

Stuart blushed, so hard it looked painful, merging with the lingering blotchy patches on his cheeks. "I know we weren't, but it kind of seemed it was going that way, and it was Valentine's Day, and you asked to spend it with me, and I told Wil never to repeat anything I said about that night to you, ever."

"Breathe," Raj instructed, and mulled the answer over. It made sense, or as much sense as anything had made since Stephanie Bloom had robbed him of his anticipated Saturday afternoon nap. "Is that why you moved back out? You said February was the best month for comic book sales."

Raj wouldn't have thought it possible, but Stuart blushed still harder.

"Seems my mother was wrong, I can tell a convincing lie. Now if I can work the same magic on her maybe I won't have to throw myself in front of a bus to spare us all another round of humiliation."

"No buses!" Raj almost shouted, the hand on Stuart's arm tightening in panic. For a moment he could see it, the screams and the blood, followed by the sterile whiteness of the hospital, and then. And then the trappings of the American funeral, black and mahogany and the huge gaping hole in his life where all the time he spent with Stuart ought to have been.

"Seems I'm not so good at wise cracking," Stuart said, with his usual flawless delivery, but Raj was too on edge, too wrung out, and the only thing he could think to do was to pull Stuart into a hug, so tight it was just on the right side of being suffocating.

"I didn't know," he said, trying to explain the inexplicable. "I thought we were just friends, you know, two dudes sharing an apartment."

"I know." Stuart's voice was a whisper. "Penny rang."

"Oh." He hadn't seen that one coming. He didn't know why that surprised him.

"I just thought we were taking things slow," Stuart went on, and Raj hated the way he said it, choked with self-recrimination and self-deprecation, and all the other kinds of self-whatevers that weren't self-satisfaction. "I should have realized that nobody would willingly have entered into a relationship with me. Especially not somebody like you."

"I don't want you to go," Raj said in response, and his own voice was choked, his throat tight with the threat of another bout of tears. He could hear what Stuart was saying, now that he knew to look for it. Stuart thought he was somebody worth knowing, somebody worth waiting for. Somebody worth taking a second, third, maybe even fourth chance on. "Promise me you won't go."

"I don't have anywhere else to go," was Stuart's answer, and the relief was overwhelming. Stuart was clever and funny and smelled nice, and knew just about everything there was to know about the DC Multiverse. He made him lunch, and walked Cinnamon, and always smiled at Raj like he was glad to see him. And the feeling was mutual, because Raj liked spending time with Stuart, liked his eyes, and his hair, and the way Stuart let him lean against his shoulder sometimes, when they were watching television.

"I want to meet your mother for Thanksgiving," Raj blurted, pulling back enough that they could both suck in a proper lungful of breath, and he could bury his words in the juncture of Stuart's neck and shoulder. "I want you to tell her I'm your boyfriend."

Stuart stiffened. "You don't have to; she's used to me turning up alone. She expects it."

Raj sniffed deeply, because Stuart really did smell nice, then lifted his head, determined. "I want to kiss you."

"I don't want your pity," Stuart said, then snorted humorlessly. "What am I saying? If you're offering pity, I'll probably take it, but I just want to put it out there that I don't expect anything. This is pretty high on the list of failures, granted, but I'm used to my sorry excuse for a love life leading to heart ache and disaster, and -"

Whatever Stuart had been going to say was lost, because Raj decided the best way to stop Stuart talking himself out of it was just to do it. And just like that they were kissing, his lips pressed against Stuart's, dry and chaste, and then slick and hungry, the slide of Stuart's tongue against his own sending a jolt of not entirely unexpected arousal through him. Stuart clutched at him, fingers twisted tight in the fabric of his jacket. In turn Raj let his fingers slide into Stuart's curls, blinking hazily when Stuart broke the kiss to look at him.

"Yeah, definitely taking the pity," Stuart said, and Raj settled for kissing Stuart's cheek, and rearranging them so they were curled together on the sofa, just enjoying the closeness and the feeling of not having completely ruined what might well turn out to be the best thing to have ever happened to him.

"Only if you take pity on me too," Raj said softly. "I'm new to this - pretty much all of this," he elaborated, meaning relationships in general and not just making out with other dudes specifically, "and I need to have everything explained to me in very simple terms, like a child, because apparently I can't read any signal. Ever."

"I could live with that," Stuart said, with the barest hint of a smile, and promptly yawned widely. Raj followed suit, the stress and the emotional rollercoaster of the day taking their toll. He squirmed, so they were settled more comfortably, and pressed a kiss into Stuart's hair, uncaring of how much sleeping on the couch would make his neck ache in the morning.

It was going to be strange, difficult. Probably more than a little bit frightening. For both of them. But it would be worth it, Raj thought.

That much he was sure of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


	2. First Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Kink Meme prompt: We need more Raj/Stuart fics! First time fics are my favorite, be it either love confessions, their first time in the sack, or even better - both! Whatever you want to write, I need more of these two guys. They're great together!
> 
> [ http://bbt-kink.livejournal.com/538.html?thread=722970#t722970 ]

Raj had always known he was different. He was too this, and not enough that, and all the other boys at school made a sport of reminding him of it, along with his older brothers, and all of his cousins. He spent too much time with his head in the clouds or, worse still, looking up at the stars, and never enough perfecting feigned interest in cricket or football.

His mother's advice was to try harder to fit in, his siblings' to laugh and to point, and to show the photographic evidence of how poor a job he had made of convincing the rest of cricket camp he was one of them to all of their school friends. It was his father who finally took him aside, when some of the differences, at least, began to make sense and told him that it wasn't his fault, that he couldn't help who he found attractive.

What he could help was whether or not he made the decision to act on it, and for all Sheldon's insinuations Raj already had the IQ points and the Mensa membership to read between the lines. It was one thing for Harun and Tanvir to flaunt their unconventionality, it was quite another for a member of the Koothrappali family.

And that was something which held true no matter where he was, be it New Delhi, or England, or Pasadena, and every time he felt certain, determined, he'd imagine his father's face, and his mother's disappointment, and pledge to any God who might be listening that he was going to make his parents proud and find a girlfriend.

Except that was so much easier said than done - even with the selective mutism - because women looked at him like he was something which had only recently oozed its way out of the primordial slime, and if they didn't, they patted his arm and told him that he and Howard made the cutest couple.

They would, Raj conceded on nights when India seemed so very far away. He knew Howard better than anyone, saw past the quips and the sleaze, and spent long lonely hours daydreaming about Howard feeling the same way, when Howard was too busy with his mother, or any girl who had the patience to put up with him.

Because the difference between them was that Howard wasn't interested. He scowled, bitter, whenever anyone joked about their friendship, and pretended not to see the wanting in Raj's eyes, the same way Raj himself pretended that he hadn't slipped up enough to let it show in the first place.

It didn't matter in the end, not really, because Howard met Bernadette, and though Raj tampered, and meddled, and finally tried to win her heart if he couldn't have his, Howard wasn't jealous in the way he wanted him to be, not even for a moment.

In turn he met Lucy, and he allowed himself to hope that maybe, just maybe, she could be the answer to all his problems. The weekly skype sessions where his mother recounted the weddings of his cousins, and his neighbors, and every distant acquaintance. And his offer to Stuart to share his apartment, which meant he spent too much time looking, and wondering, and lying to himself that it wasn't strange, not in the slightest, that he and Stuart woke up, more often than not, wrapped around each other in his bedroom.

Lucy was the one to put an end to it, and when he looked back on the relationship, Raj found that he couldn't blame her. It had been a sham, in so many ways, because he was just acting out what he thought ought to happen, and not paying anywhere near enough attention to what it was that either of them actually wanted. The others knew it too, though they commiserated, and Stuart pulled him a bunch of extra reading material, and didn't charge him for it, though Raj knew better than anyone how little Stuart could really afford the gesture.

"You know, you're probably within your rights to say I told you so," Raj said, clutching at the comics dumbly, and Stuart only half smiled at him, like the rest was hidden away with all the other things they had never openly acknowledged, and said,

"I wouldn't kick a man when he's down. Believe me, I know what it feels like."

Raj gave a half smile in return, because the regulars were listening in, and he wasn't quite ready to attract that kind of attention. Stuart got it though, that much was obvious, and Raj found himself back at the store just before closing time, in one of his nicer sweater vests and an invitation to go catch a movie, and share a bucket of popcorn.

They hung out after that, with ever increasing regularity, and though he told Howard it was just two lonely, desperate, dudes being lonely and desperate together, it was getting to the point where he could no longer convince himself of the fact. Friends didn't miss key plot points in favor of agonizing over how weird it would be, on a scale of one to ten, to link their fingers in the darkness of the movie theater. Friends didn't fix on each other at night, alone in their beds, imagining how those fingers might feel, were they allowed to wander.

"So," Penny was the one to say one night a few months later, sloshing another grasshopper onto the coffee table in front of him. "Spill."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Raj said in response. At least, that was what he had meant to say. What came out, with the aid of two or three too many grasshoppers, sounded less like English and more like Klingon. It would have been an impressive geek score had the sentence not translated to something about artichokes.

"Come on, Raj," Penny pushed, and her words were only marred by the slightest slur, "you cannot try and tell me you and Stuart haven't made at least third base yet."

Raj did try, and failed all the same, because it didn't matter how untrue it was, he still couldn't get his mouth to co-ordinate. What he did manage was, "Which one's third base again?"

Penny didn't remember the conversation the following day, or if she did she was feeling gracious enough not to mention anything about it. On consideration, he thought that it was definitely the former of the two options. He, on the other hand, couldn't think of anything but the conversation.

Except that was kind of a lie, because what his mind was actually fixating on was not Penny asking him whether he and Stuart were an item, but what it would be like if he screwed up his courage and did something completely crazy. Like march right into the comic store, suave and confident, and kiss Stuart in front of everyone.

He thought about it at work, while Sheldon whined on and on about Raj's lack of intelligence, and personal hygiene, and the fact the new grad students didn't worship the ground he walked on in the way he felt they ought to. He thought about it at the Cheesecake Factory, while Leonard complained about Sheldon's whining, and he really thought about it at the comic book store, while Howard described in a way too much detail another kind of kiss entirely.

"I was thinking," he started finally, when the others had filed out with their purchases, "I mean, if you - I just. I was wondering - "

The words wouldn't come, though his cheeks flushed, and his palms sweated, and Stuart just stood there looking at him, expectantly. Raj sucked in a fortifying breath, forced himself to maintain eye contact,

"I was thinking you should move back in with me."

It made sense. He liked having company, and Cinnamon could never get too much human affection. Stuart was sleeping back in the store room, on an air mattress with a puncture. There wouldn't be anything weird about the arrangement.

Stuart was silent for a long time, long enough for him to twist and fidget and panic, and to hold his breath so determinedly he began to feel light headed.

"You've still only got a one bedroomed apartment," Stuart said, eventually, ruining the whole it wouldn't be weird argument, and though Raj's voice didn't shake, it was a close thing as he said,

"I've got a king sized bed though."

In spite of everything it wasn't clear, what exactly it was they were doing, even as he helped Stuart move his belongings, and even as they settled beneath the covers that first night, tentatively moving closer and closer until Raj had an arm around Stuart, and Stuart's head was laid on his chest, right above the spot where his heart was racing.

"People say I get kind of clingy," Stuart murmured into the silence, as though he couldn't help but offer Raj a reason why he shouldn't go through with this. "And depressing. Actually, people say I'm always depressing."

"Dude," Raj said, letting his thumb run circles against Stuart's skin, "people say the exact same things about me. We're totally made for each other."

Stuart laughed, actually laughed, and it was that memory Raj focused on when he confessed the situation to Howard, because Howard would always be his best friend, no matter how prone he was to tormenting and teasing.

"I knew it," was Howard's response. "You've just cost Bernadette twenty bucks, my nerd-migo."

"You're not mad at me?" Raj asked, voice small, because he couldn't help it. Howard didn't hesitate, and proved why Raj had never really minded having to defend him by wrapping an arm around his shoulder, and giving him his serious smile.

"Why would I be mad? I hate to break it to you, but Stuart's really not my type. Sorry."

"You're an idiot," Raj said in response, as though he wasn't beaming like one.

Howard only hugged him tighter and finished, self importantly, "And that's why you love me."

Raj would have waited until things were on surer ground before telling the others, given the choice, but Howard wasn't the best at keeping secrets, and it turned out that Stuart had been talking things over with Wil Wheaton, of all people.

"I just thought I would have kissed a guy before I had to come out to all my friends," Raj explained, trying not to sound terrified, and Stuart overcame half a dozen anxiety related disorders to press their lips together.

It was dry, and tense, and more than a little awkward, but when Stuart tried to move back Raj pulled him closer, angled his head and let the fingers of one hand tangle in Stuart's curls. And then it was good, so good, better than all his lonely fantasies, and Stuart groaned at the first slick of tongue, kissing him back with equal fervor.

They kissed until his skin tingled, and his head spun, and as he fortified himself outside Leonard and Sheldon's apartment, he shot Stuart a shy smile and leaned in to whisper, mindful of spy cams, that at least he could say he was into men with some kind of evidence based certainty now.

Bernadette hugged them both, while Howard gave him a thumbs up, and told him that if anyone at work gave him a hard time he would take them out with his karate prowess. Or set his mother on them, whatever had the greater likelihood of working. Penny gloated that she had known it before anyone, because apparently she hadn't forgotten that conversation after all, and Leonard told them earnestly that he was really happy for the two of them.

Amy said that he was lucky, because Stuart's arts education was sure to make him comfortable with sexual contact. Sheldon's only concern, being Sheldon, was whether or not he was going to be forced to upgrade Stuart from tolerated to treasured acquaintance, and what Stuart was going to offer him to make the transition easier.

"A promise not to put that photograph of you dressed as Wonder Woman on the internet?"

Leonard shook his head. "Too late, I already did that."

Stuart shrugged. "Sorry, that's me out."

It was worth it, Raj thought, just for the agitated twitch of Sheldon's left eyebrow.

"That wasn't so bad," Stuart said later, when they were alone, and Raj didn't bother with an answer, preferring to kiss Stuart until they were both flushed and panting, because if he was going to defy his parents, he might as well make a good job of it.

He told his colleagues, and the people at his cookery class, and held Stuart's hand in public, and didn't freak out, at least not much, when somebody uploaded a picture of them together to Facebook one Saturday morning.

Priya rang him before he had chance to untag it, demanding to know if it was true that he was living with another man, just like Harun and Tanvir.

"Mummy won't be very happy," her voice crackled down the line, and contrary to all his expectations she went on, "you know you're supposed to get married before you live together."

"You didn't," he said, because his stomach was turning knots and defence seemed his best option.

"What Mummy doesn't know," Priya argued, and less than a beat later her tone turned threatening, "and if you tell her I'll see to it you suffer a long and painful death, Rajesh."

"You'll come back as a banana slug."

Priya grinned on the other end of the line, he could hear it, and finished up with, "I want to meet him. And Mummy will want to know any detail she can boast about."

He felt sick when it was over, a mixture of relief and delayed reaction, and he paced the apartment for almost an hour before writing an essay of an email to his parents, and hitting send before he could think better of it. His laptop finally rang just as Stuart got back from work, and Raj sat there swallowing convulsively, while Stuart hovered just out of sight of the camera.

"How could you do this to us, Rajesh?" His mother asked, voice shrill. "Where did we go wrong with you?"

"I didn't do it to upset you," Raj pleaded, throat choked with emotion. He had expected this reaction, really he had, but it didn't seem to make the reality of it any more bearable.

His mother stood, bangles jingling. "I can't do this."

It was worse than any physical pain he had known, and he had to struggle for breath, desperate not to cry in front of his father.

"She'll come round," his father said quietly over the video link. "It's not the life we wanted for you, but I know you did try. It was all I ever asked of you."

He did cry then, broken sobs that had Stuart pulling him into his arms, clutching him tight and whispering soothing platitudes.

"It's alright," Stuart told him over and over. "It's going to be alright, I promise."

His breathing returned to something approaching normality eventually, though Stuart continued to hold him, and pet him, and promise things Raj thought it must have made his pessimistic nature ache to verbalize.

"On the plus side," Stuart said finally, kissing his forehead, "my Mom was just happy you weren't a figment of my imagination."

"How do you know I'm not?" Raj asked, and it couldn't be wrong to be pressed together so closely, not when it felt so wonderful.

"Do you want to pay my therapist overtime?" Stuart asked, deadpan, and Raj just snuggled closer.

Things looked brighter in the morning, for all that the storm clouds hung gray and heavy on the horizon. He had more than he had dared let himself hope for, only a few months earlier, and they took hesitant steps closer and closer until Raj made a decision, and called on Howard to ask if he could borrow his tent for a night of stargazing.

"On one condition," Howard told him, even as he dug the bag out from the depths of the closet. "Never tell me what you and Stuart do in it."

"I don't know, dude," Raj grinned, "we did have that whole ersatz gay marriage thing going on."

Howard just grimaced. " _Ever_."

With the tent in hand it was just a matter of planning, and Raj had always been good at organizing overblown romantic gestures. It was finding someone willing to be the recipient of them which had been his problem.

The morning of the big day arrived, and Raj alternated between excited anticipation and panicked last minute fussing. His laptop rang in the middle of one of the latter sessions, and if he had been feeling frazzled at the prospect of springing his surprise on Stuart, he was floored at seeing his parents on the screen. They hadn't spoken since he had told them he couldn't carry on pretending, not at his age.

"I'm still not happy about it," his mother said, expression somber. "And I won't lie to you, I'm still hoping you will come to your senses."

He should accept that, Raj knew. It was the best he could hope for. But the last few months had changed him. He felt closer to being a grown up than he ever had.

"I can't change who I am, Mummy." He looked from her to his father. "Not even for you and Daddy."

His mother waved a hand, clearly irritated. "I understand that, Rajesh. But couldn't you have at least found a nice Indian boy!?"

Stuart laughed when he recounted the exchange later that day, when the store was locked up for the night and they were on their way to the campsite. When they arrived Stuart kissed him, soft and tender, and thanked him for being willing to risk his relationship with his parents for him. His voice was awed, almost disbelieving, and Raj felt giddy with the intensity of it.

"I love you," he blurted, though he hadn't meant to say it until the tent was up, and the hamper was unpacked, and the two of them were sat under a blanket of starlit sky.

"What?" Stuart asked, and when Raj frowned, frightened he had ruined everything, Stuart took his hand and smiled goofily. "I just wanted to hear you say it again."

So he did, at least a dozen times before they even made a start on the tent, and when it was finally up, and the sleeping bags were unrolled, Stuart pushed him down to lay on top of them and said, finally,

"I love you too, you know."

"This is normally the point where I wake up," Raj confessed, the proximity and the wanting leaving him breathless.

"I wanted you before you even knew my name," Stuart whispered, like it was a competition to see which of them had been more pathetic and, irrespective of what any therapist might say, it kind of did it for him, so much so that Raj reversed their positions, watching fascinated as he worked the buttons of Stuart's shirt free, his fingers dark against Stuart's milk white skin.

Stuart gasped as he let his fingers wander, the way he had been imagining since long before he thought he would ever have an actual chance of being allowed to do so. It was intoxicating, to know that he was the cause, to know that every sound Stuart made was proof that he really wanted to do this, and wasn't just drunk, or lonely. Or both.

"Oh God," Stuart groaned when Raj dropped his head to let his lips follow the path his fingers had taken. Fingers clutched at him when he sucked at the juncture of neck and shoulder, and then his movements grew frantic, trying to rid Raj of all his layers in as short a time as possible.

He tried to slow it down then, to regain some kind of control over his body. But Stuart seemed to know just how and where to touch him. How to have him straining up, desperate, into Stuart's hand, his breathing ragged and his limbs trembling.

"You look so beautiful," Stuart told him, his own voice low and roughened, with the kind of sincerity Raj imagined only an artist could succeed at. "You've no idea how often I've imagined this."

He did, Raj thought. He truly did, though he couldn't voice it, couldn't say anything, couldn't do anything but pant and whine, and, when Stuart lowered his head, surrounding him with wet heat, clench his fingers tight in the fabric of the sleeping bags, gasping for air as he came, shaking and shuddering.

"That was hot," Stuart told him in the aftermath. "Really hot."

Raj squirmed closer, fighting through the blissful haze, only for his fingers to come away wet and Stuart's cheeks to flame still brighter.

"I kind of had to," he paused and lowered his voice, though they were plenty far enough away from everyone, " _you know_. You just. You should have seen yourself."

Now that was hot, Raj thought, even as he reached for Stuart's hand, and told him how much he loved him all over again. He'd get a repeat performance before the night was out. Maybe more than one, if he was very lucky.

"I love you so much it scares me," Stuart whispered into the darkness, and Raj held him closer, as though his touch alone could ward off any and all of Stuart's demons.

Because it might not be conventional, and it might not be what his parents had wanted for him. But he was happy - so very happy - and that, Raj thought, as he pressed a series of reassuring kisses to Stuart's breastbone, was more important than anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


	3. Trouble in America

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on a prompt from last year's Queerfest: Raj Koothrappali, He thought the US was the land of liberty, sexuality-wise. 
> 
> TW for violent themes.

Things like this aren't supposed to happen in America. That's what Raj thinks when the water runs pink, for all that the blood clings stubbornly to the wet cloth he is holding. It's going to stain. He knows it will.

"It's not that bad," Stuart says, voice quiet, and Raj's stomach turns because the cut above Stuart's eye is bleeding again, too stark and too vivid, like something out of a horror movie.

"Maybe you should go to the hospital."

The eye itself is swollen shut, to match the angry bruising and the split lip. Those aren't even the injuries Raj is worried about - they're the ones hidden beneath Stuart's shirt, the ones that are keeping his posture tense and his breathing shallow.

"You could have a broken rib. Or internal bleeding."

"I doubt it. I'm not lucky enough for this to put me out of my misery."

It's supposed to be funny, probably, the kind of self-deprecating humor Stuart has made himself synonymous with. All it does is scare Raj, because the tone is off, and at this proximity, under the bathroom light, Stuart has no way of hiding the glimmer of unshed tears.

"We should go to the police," Raj says, not for the first time since he had taken the phone call and, at Stuart's request, made up some half-baked lie to tell the others. "It isn't right for someone to get away with doing this to you."

"No police," is what Stuart says, determined, though Raj can see that even the effort of speaking is painful. "No hospitals."

Raj wants to protest. To say that he wasn't blind to the graffiti daubed across the store window, that he knows why this happened. To explain that it's wrong, especially here, where people are meant to live their lives openly, and the police are meant to do more than simply ensure that people keep their mouths shut.

He doesn't. Because Stuart looks so very broken, and because Stuart has never given any hint that he's a fan of unsolicited idealism.

"I'm glad you rang me," he says instead, because as bad as this is, it's so much better than thinking about the alternative. Stuart would have done it too, he thinks, not so very long ago. Just patched himself up, and scrubbed the storefront, and never breathed a word of it to anyone.

Stuart says nothing, but he doesn't need to. Raj can hear his response loud and clear in the way his hand reaches for his, the touch simple yet ground moving.

"I'm glad you answered."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


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